Another student barred from Conservative Party rally

University of Guelph student told she is not welcome at Conservative rally

Joanna MacDonald, pictured in this undated handout photo, says she pre-registered for Conservative Leader Stephen Harper's election campaign rally at the University of Guelph on Monday April 5, 2011, but was barred from the event.

By:Kenyon WallaceToronto Star, Published on Wed Apr 06 2011

As a young voter looking to learn more about what political parties stand for, Joanna MacDonald was thrilled to learn Conservative Party Leader Stephen Harper was coming to town for a campaign rally.

The 21-year-old environmental science student at the University of Guelph immediately went online to the local Conservative candidate’s website and signed up to attend the event.

All she had to do was provide her name, address and email address. Everything looked in order.

But when she arrived Monday at the Delta Guelph Hotel and Conference Centre where Harper was scheduled to speak, her registration in hand, MacDonald was informed she was not welcome.

Why? An unidentified Conservative Party official told her that her name had been “flagged.”

“I was told the RCMP had done a screening and that perhaps my name was affiliated with something on Facebook or the Internet,” MacDonald told the Star. “Something that made me unfit to enter. They wouldn’t say what it was.”

MacDonald says she has never been affiliated with any political party. Nor has she participated in any anti-government or anti-Conservative rallies.

“I was shocked. This had never happened to me before, so I didn’t really know how to deal with it.”

When she pressed officials further, she was asked if she had ever been involved with any on-campus clubs. When MacDonald replied that she had been involved with various environmental groups — including one advocating for the removal of bottled water from the university grounds — she said the official responded, saying: “Well, that’s probably why.”

The only way party officials would have known about what clubs she was associated with, MacDonald said, is if they had searched her name on Google and looked into her background.

Oddly, MacDonald’s friend, Gill Buckle, who is also involved in similar environmental causes, was allowed entry.

“I was baffled,” said Buckle, 21. “Neither of us are politically affiliated, and even if we were, I don’t see how that would be relevant. We just want to make an informed vote. We wanted to hear what each party had to say.”

The Conservative Party has not yet responded to the Star’s request for comment.

MacDonald wasn’t the only University of Guelph student to be caught up in the Conservative Party’s campaign rally security machine. A group of students who assembled in a “flash mob” as Harper’s bus arrived were also turned away from the event.

Just a day before, Conservative organizers at a rally at the University of Western Ontario in London asked student Awish Aslam to leave allegedly because she had posted a photo of herself with Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff on her Facebook page.

The tightly-controlled rallies, in which Harper seldom interacts with regular members of the public who aren’t already vetted by his handlers, have made the Conservatives the target of criticism from the public and other party leaders.

Speaking Tuesday, Ignatieff characterized the prohibition of a young woman from campaign rallies as “un-Canadian.”

“This vision of politics in which all is permitted, including violating the rights of a young Canadian...tells you everything you want to know about why we must defeat Stephen Harper,” he said at a rally.

MacDonald says such “disgusting” tactics only serve to alienate young people from the electoral process, a population eager to learn about how they can make a difference.

“I genuinely wanted to hear what Mr. Harper had to say,” she said. “When you’re not allowed to go to an event, it sends the message that they don’t care about what I have to say, that they don’t care about my vote. That’s a mistake on their part.”

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